Our First Time...

    

I will begin with the confession that I am not a doctor...yet.  I am however, a self confessed expert of the heart.

Having said that, I will not attempt to diagnose your existing case of mitovalve prolapse or prescribe drugs to alleviate congestion of any sort.  To be perfectly clear, I will not even advise two aspirin and a follow-up telephone call. What I specialize in are the subtleties and eccentricities of your heart's most viable function: to love or to cope with the lack thereof.

When you need relationship advice, your mom, dad, neighbors and friends will obligingly dish out their own little pearls of wisdom to you—even if it is unsolicited over Sunday brunch when you are just trying to recover from the events on Saturday night.

So then just, just what are the qualifications from your loved ones or that random stranger at the bar the Dalai Lama of Love?

Unlike “Earl” at your local watering hole, I do not profess to know all the answers.
            I am just a southern boy who grew up with a very southern grandmother now lucky enough to have the opportunity to pass along some of the wisdom learned.  After all, she was married a half a dozen times, so she must have learned something, right??
            She often told me that there was a lid for every pot, but that I happened to be oddly shaped; it would most likely take a while to find a match.

So dear readers, I am still looking for my lid, but rarely discouraged while on my quest.  So for my first piece of advice, I offer up this little golden nugget of truth: though all your dating mishaps, minor disasters and major catastrophes, never lose your hope or sense of humor.  Your next date, after all, holds infinite possibilities for love.

Never think of them as interviews or inquisitions because they will become just that.  First dates should be fun and frivolous, not an initial interview for matrimony.

            The truth is often difficult to hear and sometimes even harder to read especially when it comes to relationships, but I hope you keep an open ear and more importantly, an open heart…and I hope you find the humor in some of my dating escapades because I certainly do and maintain that in every bad date, there is usually a good lesson.